Things I miss about Germany

Truly amazing chocolate that is affordable enough to be enjoyed on a daily basis. Same goes for wine, cheese, bread, and mass transit.

Restaurant waitstaff that don’t pretend to be your best friend. All I really want waitstaff to do is answer questions about the menu and bring food and drink to my table. They do that in Europe without pretending to like you. In fact, I think usually they don’t like you. I also miss walking into a cafe alone and not being treated like a second-class citizen.

German bookstores. They are fantastic, all of them groaning under the weight of books printed in every conceivable language.

Architecture. Buildings should be more than just containers for things and people.

Mainstream environmentalism. One of the more pleasant surprises living in Germany was the way environmentalism was not a fringe movement. It was out in the open, taking place every day. Every time I bought anything in a glass or plastic container, I could take it back to the supermarket and get Real Cash Money, sometimes as much as €0.25 per container (A few states in the US have similar programs, but no one bothers). There were solar panels on nearly every roof and wind turbines turning away on the hilltops. Germans seem to accept environmental responsibility as a part of everyday life.

Awkward cinema intermissions. They just stop the film mid-dialogue — nay, mid-sentence — for about ten minutes and give everyone time to take a whiz and buy another beer.

Real effing bread. Good beer is readily available in most civilized parts of the US now. Good bread is considerably harder to come by, and it generally costs a small fortune.